### On Linkability and Malleability in Self-blindable Credentials

Jaap-Henk Hoepman, Wouter Lueks, and Sietse Ringers

##### Abstract

Self-blindable credential schemes allow users to anonymously prove ownership of credentials. This is achieved by randomizing the credential before each showing in such a way that it still remains valid. As a result, each time a different version of the same credential is presented. A number of such schemes have been proposed, but unfortunately many of them are broken, in the sense that they are linkable (i.e., failing to protect the privacy of the user), or malleable (i.e., they allow users to create new credentials using one or more valid credentials given to them). In this paper we prove a general theorem that relates linkability and malleability in self-blindable credential schemes, and that can test whether a scheme is linkable or malleable. After that we apply the theorem to a number of self-blindable credential schemes to show that they suffer from one or both of these issues.

Available format(s)
Category
Cryptographic protocols
Publication info
Published elsewhere. The 9th WISTP International Conference on Information Security Theory and Practice (WISTP’2015)
DOI
10.1007/978-3-319-24018-3_13
Keywords
anonymous credentialsself-blindable credentialselliptic curve cryptosystem
Contact author(s)
s ringers @ rug nl
History
Short URL
https://ia.cr/2015/842

CC BY

BibTeX

@misc{cryptoeprint:2015/842,
author = {Jaap-Henk Hoepman and Wouter Lueks and Sietse Ringers},
title = {On Linkability and Malleability in Self-blindable Credentials},
howpublished = {Cryptology ePrint Archive, Paper 2015/842},
year = {2015},
doi = {10.1007/978-3-319-24018-3_13},
note = {\url{https://eprint.iacr.org/2015/842}},
url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2015/842}
}

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